Carb-o-nation

"I never met a carb I didn't like."(Author unknown)

"Food, glorious food!" -Oliver Twist

I love food, but it doesn't love me. Anything beyond 40 grams of carbs has immediate and disastrous effects upon my blood sugar..but I still love carbs. Doughnuts(with the cream filling), spaghetti,cereal waffles,bagels,Twinkies,chips n'dip, ice cream with decadent dripping chocolate syrup,all variety of pasta dishes,pizza,subs,biscuits 'n gravy, mashed potatos, breads,you get the general idea. I cannot live on egg whites and celery sticks. I can generally do pretty well with reducing the after-meal spikes(especially thanks to help of Le Symlin)but there are still foods that are really, really, disastrous and I fail every time.

Like cereal. Any kind or brand, hello 400 mg/dl.

And Chinese food. Not quite a 400, more like 260 for 3-4 hours while I bolus repeatedly and wonder if it will ever come down.

So I restrict those,(as in, eat once or twice a year)and I try to not eat humongous carbohydrate meals.(not just for the aftermeal spike, but because all that insulin catches up and makes me plummet. And its not just a matter of poor timing,it's when I take a good deal of insulin for a meal,the action of it gets pushed out several more hours(for some bizarre reason),it's like Superbolus and it takes forever to out of the system. I guess that's good if you plan to eat again anyway,but sometimes I'm simply not hungry and there's no freedom in being married to your insulin. I guess I could get the cereal bolus down(with some experimentation)but anything involving a pre-meal bolus of 30+ minutes has me more then a little leery. There are other breakfast foods that are more predictable(that don't require pre-bolusing) & I'd rather stick with them.

I eat alot of protein,to help smooth the spikes(sometimes too much and that has bg effects too) And multiple snacks throughout the course of day-like cottage cheese, graham crackers w/pb, soyjoy bars,popcorn w/cheese,ham sandwiches.All carbs are fine(in moderation) and if 3 chocolate bars equaled 45 carbohydrates you can bet I'd eat 'em all. Unfortunately,that's not the case.(and that's not to say that I don't go carb wild and eat like I haven't, for a week) It all depends on whether or not you can get(and keep) those numbers where you want them. For me, small meals and frequent snacks work better.

Sometimes it may appear that PWD don't have any freedom in their diet..but in reality,we're like most of the rest of the non-pancreotically challenged crowd.It's a matter of intake vs.outtake,& the rest of America has to deal with that issue too.
(if you eat too many calories, whether from fat,protein, or carbs, you will gain weight)As a nation, we eat too many calories(and carbs are a major contributor to that)But carbs aren't evil if you can handle the calories/bg rise.(it's the diabetes that's evil) Although, if you're type 2..it may be a whole other ballgame,I'm writing this from a type 1 perspective. If I don't have carbs, I just cannot function. That's my take on the whole issue.